Small Crimes
by songstar13
Summary: Rose and Eleven consider their lives apart. Spoilers through the Wedding of River Song. Not a reunion fic. Angst.


**A/N: **This piece was inspired by the song "Nine Crimes" by Damien Rice. Give it a listen while you read; it's a great song.

**Small Crimes**

It's wrong and it's right and she can't tell the difference anymore, not with his hand tangled in her own and his breath washing over her face and his single heartbeat racing in time with her own. Their sweat mingles on the twisted agony of the sheets and the straining desperation of their bodies. It's exhilaration and ecstasy and excruciation all wrapped into one. She can't tell where one begins and another ends.

She's tried to convince herself that this is what she wants, that she hasn't been cheated and slighted by the universe, and in a way, she believes it. She's happy. He's happy. They're happy together, in this new life they're building. His things are scattered around the flat in the messy disarray of familiarity and comfortability; his toothbrush next to hers on the bathroom sink, his shoes toed off absentmindedly near the door, his soap and razor and aftershave tucked neatly into the cabinet. They have jobs and doors and carpets but not a mortgage, and it's a good life, the kind of life she used to dream about when she was little.

This is what she wants. This is her happy ending. The words are a mantra in her head, a steady rhythm punctuated and interrupted by the sounds of their intimacy. She's happy.

So why does it still hurt? He loves her with the entirety of his single human heart: an intense, passionate, all-consuming love. He could lose the world and as long as he had her, he'd be content. The earth stays still beneath his feet, there is no singing TARDIS to fill his mind, and he's dedicated his entire being to the purpose of loving Rose Tyler with single-minded determination.

And she loves him back—just as passionately, just as desperately. She does. It's a story for the history books, the story of Rose Tyler and the Doctor, as her friends and family and coworkers would tell her. A love story to transcend time and space and dimensions, a love that destroys worlds and rewrites laws of possibility. She loves him—always has, always will.

But he's not the man in her mind's eye right now. It's sick and wrong and the worst kind of betrayal, to be thinking of _him _while she's with Him, but there's a glowing, howling part of her that resents the single pulse in his veins and the transient fragility of his biology. It prowls in the back of her mind and hates him for his humanity, for the weakness of that lone heart pounding so furiously in rib cage.

Her body is tightening, coiling, reaching for that last peak of pleasure. Words of love and devotion and rapture spill from her lips but the golden part of her whispers bitter words in counterpoint. Words like _not enough_ and _wrong_ and _cheap imitation_. She reaches completion despite the discord, melting into their bed, boneless and sated.

"I love you." His words caress the sensitive skin near her left ear and she shudders weakly.

"I love you, too."

And it's true, except when it's not.

* * *

River was nothing like Rose. They spoke differently, acted differently, treated him differently. There was nothing in River's face or mannerisms that reminded him of her. Her eyes didn't shine with honesty and a hint of gold the way Rose's had, and her hair—all frizzy and wild and brown—bore no resemblance to the sleek blonde that has taunted his memories.

So there was no reason that he should have been thinking of Rose while looking at River, but there it was.

Their hands are tied together by his hastily removed bow-tie, and he's on the verge of his own death, and she's staring at him with so much hope and reverence and love in her eyes and all he can think about is how she's not Rose. Two hearts and he can't find space in either of them for this new woman, even though her timelines are inextricably tangled with his own, but he's going to take her anyway, because he must.

But it should be _her _standing here with him, exchanging hasty vows and a kiss to seal the deal, not this frizzy haired enigma, the child of his two best friends. His hearts twist with guilt and shame, because he can't stand to be alone anymore, and even though he'll never forget Rose, he can't spend the rest of his life waiting for someone he's already forfeit to another.

It's cruel and it's wrong and guilt curls, burning, in the back of his mind. He's never done anything right by anyone, not in eleven lives and 1200 years, but he's never felt quite as low as he does in this moment. He's using her. She loves him, and even though the rolling drums of his heartbeat have a name, he's going to be selfish. She loves him, and it eases the searing pain in his chest, narrows the aching chasm of loneliness even if it doesn't quite bridge it.

River is like a shining promise in his mind, a promise of relief in the hopeless absence of a cure, and he reaches for it desperately. He can't have what he really wants (and it's only his own fault, even if it was the right thing to do, even if it was what the universe demanded) so he'll settle for what's being offered to him in the here and now.

He'll lie.


End file.
